Déjà vu (French - "already seen") is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness" or "weirdness". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past. The opposite of deja vu is
jamais vu - in which a person cannot temporarily remember something that they are well acquainted with. For example, when you cannot recall a common word, you are in jamais vu. Sometimes, when some words are almost there at the tip of your tongue but you are unable to spell it out, it is called
presque vu.